Let there be Darkness: Continuity and Discontinuity in the ‘Curse’ of Job 3
This rhetorical and intertextual study of Job 3.1-31 finds in Job’s ‘curse’ a response to catastrophic suffering that is paradigmatic for both the linguistic construction of meaning and the reading of biblical texts. Job’s crisis exposes a fissure between human experience that does not conform to tr...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sage
2002
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| In: |
Journal for the study of the Old Testament
Year: 2002, Volume: 26, Issue: 4, Pages: 89-104 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This rhetorical and intertextual study of Job 3.1-31 finds in Job’s ‘curse’ a response to catastrophic suffering that is paradigmatic for both the linguistic construction of meaning and the reading of biblical texts. Job’s crisis exposes a fissure between human experience that does not conform to traditional understandings of a divinely ordered world and language constitutive of tradition. The resulting loss of coherence calls for a radical reordering of reality. Job recasts the schema of the Priestly creation account and convokes 16 jussives against the agencies of his birth—a pattern repeated in his Oath of Innocence—to conjure a world of reversals. Creation is dismantled even as its rhetoric provides the context for new meaning. A return to [UNKNOWN][UNKNOWN][UNKNOWN] (40.4) signals that the rift between experience and language may have begun to heal. |
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| ISSN: | 1476-6728 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the study of the Old Testament
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/030908920202600406 |